The entertainment industry’s professional grievance class strikes again, and this time it’s “The View” co-host Sunny Hostin serving up a fresh batch of victimhood — despite sitting atop a media perch that 99 percent of Americans could only dream of.
During a recent broadcast, Hostin once again reached for the race card, claiming she’s been personally blocked by “Hollywood gatekeeping” because no studio will adapt her steamy novel trilogy — which she herself has admitted amounts to “smut” — into a film or streaming series.
“The gatekeeping in Hollywood around Black and Brown creative content is insane,” Hostin declared, insisting she can’t get her New York Times best-sellers onto the screen despite six years of trying.
Here’s the problem: nobody is entitled to a film deal just because their book sold copies. And the notion that Black and Brown stories are being systematically shut out doesn’t hold up — one need only look at the sprawling filmographies already out there, not to mention BET, an entire television network built specifically around Black entertainment.
But the real kicker? Hostin has been caught doing the exact thing she accuses Hollywood of doing to her.
Rather than wait for a studio deal, Hostin recently licensed her own likeness to an AI production company in hopes of getting her books made — using artificial intelligence instead of actual Black and Brown performers. Even her own “View” colleagues weren’t buying it.
Co-host Joy Behar pressed her directly: “If those people are, in fact, robots, how does that help the real Black community?”
Hostin insisted they weren’t robots but “AI images,” arguing the technology was necessary because real actors “are not getting jobs in Hollywood.”
Behar wasn’t having it. “Well, this makes sure they never will,” she shot back, later adding, “those same people that you’re worried about are now out of work.”
Hostin tried to dodge responsibility, protesting, “I’m not the person putting them out of work, because the studios just won’t make these projects.” Behar’s response cut right to the heart of it: “Force them to do it rather than have a robot replace Black people in movies.”
It’s a rare moment of clarity breaking through daytime television’s usual grievance theater. Hostin spends her airtime lecturing Hollywood about failing to hire Black talent, yet when her own AI shortcut is exposed, she pivots to “I didn’t fire anyone” — conveniently ignoring that she also isn’t hiring anyone. By turning to AI-generated likenesses instead of real actors, she’s doing precisely what she claims to be fighting against.
The message seems to be that gatekeeping is only a crisis when it stands between Sunny Hostin and a paycheck. For every other actor left outside looking in? That’s apparently somebody else’s problem to solve.
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